The Canon PowerShot G9, attached on from extend year's PowerShot G7 model, is visually inordinately complementary to its predecessor - the different undemanding changes being a reprofiling of the bail also generate panel. Under the skin, the Canon G9 offers a CCD sensor resolution of twelve megapixel (up from ten in the G7), coupled to the same Canon-branded 35 - 210mm equivalent 6x optical zoom lens.

The sensor is mounted on a moveable platter, to provide CCD shift-type image stabilization, and images are framed either via a real-image optical zoom viewfinder (an increasingly rare option these days), or on a 3.0" LCD display. Optical viewfinders can be rather nice to have, allowing you to save battery life, or get the shot when harsh sunlight makes it harder to see an image on many digicams displays; the LCD will be the better choice when shooting scenes that will be affected by parallax error, or when precise framing is necessary particularly if using the stabilizer.

As in truth owing to the no problem abetment network sensor settlement (which comes from a slightly superior 1/1.7" imager), efficient are some others changes force the PowerShot G9. It marks a good return to the G-series of a raw file format, an option that had been removed in the previous model. The G9's LCD display is also half an inch larger, being a 3.0" type with 230,000 pixels. The maximum ISO sensitivity has now been raised to 3200, although this can only be accessed in a specific scene mode - otherwise the limit remains ISO 1600 as in the previous camera. Other features of the Canon Power-shot G9 include USB 2.0 connectivity, and SD/MMC card storage with support for the SDHC card format.